1932 in literature
Encyclopedia
The year 1932 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

  • E. V. Knox
    E. V. Knox
    Edmund George Valpy Knox , was a poet and satirist who wrote under the pseudonym Evoe. He was editor of Punch 1932-1949, having been a regular contributor in verse and prose for many years....

     replaces Sir Owen Seaman
    Owen Seaman
    Sir Owen Seaman, 1st Baronet was a British writer, journalist and poet. He is best known as editor of Punch, from 1906 to 1932.-Biography:...

     as editor of Punch magazine.
  • Samuel Beckett
    Samuel Beckett
    Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

    's first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, is rejected by several publishers.
  • W. B. Yeats
    William Butler Yeats
    William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...

     rents a house in Dublin.
  • The New Poetry (Thơ mới) period began, marked by an article and a poem of Phan Khôi, beginning Modern Literature in Vietnam
    Vietnam
    Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

    .

New books

  • Laura Adams Armer
    Laura Adams Armer
    Laura Adams Armer was an American artist and writer. In 1932, her novel Waterless Mountain won the Newbery Medal....

     - Waterless Mountain
    Waterless Mountain
    Waterless Mountain is a novel by Laura Adams Armer that was awarded the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1932.-Plot:...

  • Henry Bellamann
    Henry Bellamann
    Heinrich Hauer Bellamann was an American novelist and poet, best known as the author of the novel Kings Row.- Biography :...

     - The Richest Woman in Town
  • John Buchan - The Gap in the Curtain
    The Gap in the Curtain
    The Gap in the Curtain is a 1932 novel by John Buchan. It is borderline science fiction.-Plot:At a country house, five guests gather and are chosen by a brilliant scientist to take part in a shocking experiment which will let them glimpse one year into the future. However, when the experiment takes...

  • Pearl S. Buck
    Pearl S. Buck
    Pearl Sydenstricker Buck also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu , was an American writer who spent most of her time until 1934 in China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the U.S. in 1931 and 1932, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932...

     - Sons
    Sons (novel)
    Sons is the sequel to the novel The Good Earth, and the second book in The House of Earth trilogy by renowned author Pearl S. Buck. It was first published in 1932....

  • Edgar Rice Burroughs
    Edgar Rice Burroughs
    Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.-Biography:...

     - Tarzan Triumphant
    Tarzan Triumphant
    Tarzan Triumphant is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the fifteenth in his series of books about the title character Tarzan. The novel was originally serialized in the magazine Blue Book from October, 1931 through March, 1932...

  • Erskine Caldwell
    Erskine Caldwell
    Erskine Preston Caldwell was an American author. His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native South like the novels Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre won him critical acclaim, but they also made him controversial among fellow Southerners of the time who felt he was...

     - Tobacco Road
    Tobacco Road (novel)
    Tobacco Road is a 1932 novel by Erskine Caldwell about Georgia sharecroppers. It was dramatized for Broadway by Jack Kirkland in 1933, and ran for a then-astounding eight years . A 1941 film version, deliberately played mainly for laughs, was directed by John Ford, and the storyline was...

  • Morley Callaghan
    Morley Callaghan
    Morley Callaghan, was a Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, TV and radio personality.-Biography:...

     - A Broken Journey
  • John Dickson Carr
    John Dickson Carr
    John Dickson Carr was an American author of detective stories, who also published under the pen names Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn....

    • The Waxworks Murder
      The Waxworks Murder
      The Waxworks Murder, first published in 1932, is a detective story by John Dickson Carr featuring his series detective Henri Bencolin of the Parisian police. This novel is a mystery of the type known as a whodunnit.-Plot summary:...

    • Poison In Jest
      Poison in Jest
      Poison In Jest, first published in 1932, is a detective story by John Dickson Carr which does not feature any of Carr's series detectives. This novel is a mystery of the type known as a whodunnit.-Plot summary:...

  • Louis-Ferdinand Céline
    Louis-Ferdinand Céline
    Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and...

     - Journey to the End of the Night
    Journey to the End of the Night
    Journey to the End of Night is the first novel of Louis-Ferdinand Céline. This semi-autobiographical work describes antihero Ferdinand Bardamu....

  • Agatha Christie
    Agatha Christie
    Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...

    • Peril at End House
      Peril at End House
      Peril at End House is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie first published in the US by the Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1932 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in March of the same year...

    • The Thirteen Problems
      The Thirteen Problems
      The Thirteen Problems is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by Collins Crime Club in June 1932 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1933 under the title The Tuesday Club Murders. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence and the US...

  • Colette
    Colette
    Colette was the surname of the French novelist and performer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette . She is best known for her novel Gigi, upon which Lerner and Loewe based the stage and film musical comedies of the same title.-Early life and marriage:Colette was born to retired military officer Jules-Joseph...

     - Le Pur et L'Impur
  • A. J. Cronin
    A. J. Cronin
    Archibald Joseph Cronin was a Scottish physician and novelist. His best-known works are Hatter's Castle, The Stars Look Down, The Citadel, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years, all of which were adapted to film. He also created the Dr...

     - Three Loves
    Three Loves
    Three Loves is a 1932 novel by A.J. Cronin about the loves of Lucy Moore — her husband, her son, and God. Initially published by Gollancz, the story demonstrates how a virtue can become a vice when misguided in seeking rewards other than those in and of itself. The self-satisfied Lucy loves...

  • John Dos Passos
    John Dos Passos
    John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...

     - 1919
  • William Faulkner
    William Faulkner
    William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

     - Light in August
    Light in August
    Light in August is a 1932 novel by the American author William Faulkner.Light in August is an exploration of racial conflict in the society of the Southern United States. Originally Faulkner planned to call the novel Dark House, which also became the working title for Absalom, Absalom!...

  • Lion Feuchtwanger
    Lion Feuchtwanger
    Lion Feuchtwanger was a German-Jewish novelist and playwright. A prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany, he influenced contemporaries including playwright Bertolt Brecht....

     - Josephus
  • Rudolph Fisher
    Rudolph Fisher
    Rudolph Fisher was an African-American physician, radiologist, novelist, short story writer, dramatist, musician, and orator. Fisher's parents were John Wesley Fisher, a clergyman, and Glendora Williamson. Fisher had three children.His first published work, "City of Refuge", appeared in the...

      - The Conjure Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem
  • Elena Fortún
    Elena Fortún
    Encarnación Aragoneses Urquijo , Spanish author of children's literature who wrote under the pen name, Elena Fortún. She became famous for Celia, lo que dice the first in the series of children's novels which were a collection of short stories first published in magazines in 1929...

     - Celia en el colegio
    Celia en el colegio
    Celia en el colegio is the second in the series of Celia novels by Elena Fortún, first published in 1932 according to records. Considered classics of Spanish literature, the books told the stories of a little girl named Celia living in Spain during the 1930s...

  • Lewis Grassic Gibbon
    Lewis Grassic Gibbon
    Lewis Grassic Gibbon was the pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell , a Scottish writer.-Biography:...

     - Sunset Song
    Sunset Song
    Sunset Song is a 1932 novel by the Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon. It is widely regarded as one of the most important Scottish novels of the 20th century...

  • Stella Gibbons
    Stella Gibbons
    Stella Dorothea Gibbons was an English novelist, journalist, poet, and short-story writer.Her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm, won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize for 1933...

     - Cold Comfort Farm
    Cold Comfort Farm
    Cold Comfort Farm is a comic novel by Stella Gibbons, published in 1932. It parodies the romanticised, sometimes doom-laden accounts of rural life popular at the time, by writers such as Mary Webb...

  • Ellen Glasgow
    Ellen Glasgow
    Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist who portrayed the changing world of the contemporary south.-Biography:...

     - The Sheltered Life
  • Herman Hesse - Journey to the East
    Journey to the East
    Journey to the East is a short novel by German author Hermann Hesse. It was first published in German in 1932 as "Die Morgenlandfahrt". This novel came directly after his biggest international success, Narcissus and Goldmund.-Plot summary:...

  • Aldous Huxley
    Aldous Huxley
    Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...

     - Brave New World
    Brave New World
    Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...

  • Annabel Jackson
    Claire Annabel Caroline Grant Duff
    Claire Annabel Caroline Grant Duff, , was a poet, writer and high society hostess. She was the eldest daughter of Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff and Anna Julia Webster. She was the author of A Victorian Childhood, which was published in 1932, under the pen name Annabel Jackson...

     - A Victorian Childhood
  • W. Somerset Maugham
    W. Somerset Maugham
    William Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...

     - The Narrow Corner
  • Nancy Mitford
    Nancy Mitford
    Nancy Freeman-Mitford, CBE , styled The Hon. Nancy Mitford before her marriage and The Hon. Mrs Peter Rodd thereafter, was an English novelist and biographer, one of the Bright Young People on the London social scene in the inter-war years...

     - Christmas Pudding
    Christmas pudding
    Christmas pudding is a pudding traditionally served on Christmas Day . It has its origins in medieval England, and is sometimes known as plum pudding or plum duff, though this can also refer to other kinds of boiled pudding involving dried fruit.-Basics:Many households have their own recipe for...

  • Vladimir Nabokov
    Vladimir Nabokov
    Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...

    • Glory
      Glory (novel)
      Glory is a Russian novel written by Vladimir Nabokov between 1930 and 1932 and first published in Paris.The novel has been seen by some critics as a kind fictional dress-run-through of the author's famous memoir Speak, Memory...

    • Laughter in the Dark
  • Charles Nordhoff
    Charles Nordhoff
    Charles Bernard Nordhoff was an English-born American novelist and traveler.-Early life:Charles Nordhoff was born in London, England, on February 1, 1887, to American parents. His father was Walter Nordhoff, a wealthy businessman and author of The Journey of the Flame penned under the name...

     & James Norman Hall
    James Norman Hall
    James Norman Hall was an American author best known for the novel Mutiny on the Bounty with co-author Charles Nordhoff.-Biography:Hall was born in Colfax, Iowa, where he attended the local schools...

     - Mutiny on the Bounty
    Mutiny on the Bounty (novel)
    For the actual event described in this book, see Mutiny on the Bounty.Mutiny on the Bounty is the title of the 1932 novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, based on the mutiny against Lieutenant William Bligh, commanding officer of the Bounty in 1789. It has been made into several films...

  • Anthony Powell
    Anthony Powell
    Anthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975....

      - Venusberg
    Venusberg (novel)
    Venusberg is the second novel by the English writer Anthony Powell. Published in 1932, it is set in an unidentified Baltic country which draws clearly on Powell's experiences in Finland and Estonia. Some see the novel as part of the Ruritanian tradition Venusberg is the second novel by the English...

  • Ellery Queen
    Ellery Queen
    Ellery Queen is both a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn, New York: Daniel Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay and Manford Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee , to write, edit, and anthologize detective fiction.The fictional Ellery Queen created by...

    • The Greek Coffin Mystery
      The Greek Coffin Mystery
      The Greek Coffin Mystery is a novel that was written in 1932 by Ellery Queen. It is the fourth of the Ellery Queen mysteries.-Plot summary:...

    • The Egyptian Cross Mystery
      The Egyptian Cross Mystery
      The Egyptian Cross Mystery is a novel that was written in 1932 by Ellery Queen. It is the fifth of the Ellery Queen mysteries.-Plot summary:...

  • Arthur Ransome
    Arthur Ransome
    Arthur Michell Ransome was an English author and journalist, best known for writing the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books. These tell of school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. Many of the books involve sailing; other common subjects...

     - Peter Duck
    Peter Duck
    Peter Duck is the third book in the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. The Swallows and Amazons sail to Crab Island with Captain Flint and Peter Duck an old sailor to recover buried treasure...

  • Joseph Roth
    Joseph Roth
    Joseph Roth, born Moses Joseph Roth , was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga Radetzky March about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and for his novel of Jewish life, Job as well as the seminal essay 'Juden auf Wanderschaft' translated in...

     - Radetzky March
    Radetzky March (novel)
    Radetzky March by Joseph Roth chronicles the decline and fall of the Austro–Hungarian Empire via the story of the Trotta family’s elevation to the nobility...

  • Damon Runyon
    Damon Runyon
    Alfred Damon Runyon was an American newspaperman and writer.He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the...

     - Guys and Dolls
  • Dorothy L. Sayers
    Dorothy L. Sayers
    Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...

     - Have His Carcase
    Have His Carcase
    Have His Carcase is a 1932 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her seventh featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and her second novel in which Harriet Vane appears...

  • Thorne Smith
    Thorne Smith
    James Thorne Smith Jr. , was an American writer of humorous supernatural fantasy fiction.He is best known today for the three Topper novels, comic fantasy fiction that sold millions of copies in the early 1930s...

     - Topper Takes a Trip
  • John Steinbeck
    John Steinbeck
    John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...

     - The Pastures of Heaven
    The Pastures of Heaven
    The Pastures of Heaven is a short story cycle by John Steinbeck, first published in 1932, consisting of twelve interconnected stories about a valley in Monterey, California, which was discovered by a Spanish corporal while chasing runaway Indian slaves...

  • Phoebe Atwood Taylor
    Phoebe Atwood Taylor
    Phoebe Atwood Taylor was an American mystery author.Phoebe Atwood Taylor wrote mystery novels under her own name, and as Freeman Dana and Alice Tilton. Her first novel, The Cape Cod Mystery, introduced the "Codfish Sherlock", Asey Mayo, who became a series character appearing in 24 novels...

     - Death Lights a Candle
  • Wallace Thurman
    Wallace Thurman
    Wallace Henry Thurman was an American novelist during the Harlem Renaissance. He is best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life, which explores discrimination among black people based on skin color.-Early life:...

     - Infants Of The Spring
  • Sigrid Undset
    Sigrid Undset
    Sigrid Undset was a Norwegian novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928.-Biography:Undset was born in Kalundborg, Denmark, but her family moved to Norway when she was two years old. In 1924, she converted to Catholicism and became a lay Dominican...

    • Burning Bush
    • The Son Avenger
  • Hugh Walpole
    Hugh Walpole
    Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE was an English novelist. A prolific writer, he published thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting, his vivid plots, his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large...

     - The Fortress
  • Evelyn Waugh
    Evelyn Waugh
    Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...

     - Black Mischief
    Black Mischief
    Black Mischief was Evelyn Waugh's third novel, published in 1932. The novel chronicles the efforts of the English-educated Emperor Seth, assisted by a fellow Oxford graduate, Basil Seal, to modernize his Empire, the fictional African island of Azania, located in the Indian Ocean off of the eastern...

  • Laura Ingalls Wilder
    Laura Ingalls Wilder
    Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder was an American author who wrote the Little House series of books based on her childhood in a pioneer family...

     - Little House in the Big Woods
  • Charles Williams
    Charles Williams (UK writer)
    Charles Walter Stansby Williams was a British poet, novelist, theologian, literary critic, and member of the Inklings.- Biography :...

     - The Greater Trumps

New drama

  • Elias Canetti
    Elias Canetti
    Elias Canetti was a Bulgarian-born modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer. He wrote in German and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power".-Life:...

     - The Wedding
  • Noël Coward
    Noël Coward
    Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...

     - Design for Living
    Design for Living
    Design for Living is a comedy play written by Noël Coward in 1932. It concerns a trio of artistic characters, Gilda, Otto and Leo, and their complicated three-way relationship. Originally written to star Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt and Coward, it was premiered on Broadway, partly because its risqué...

  • George S. Kaufman
    George S. Kaufman
    George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, notably for the Marx Brothers...

     and Edna Ferber
    Edna Ferber
    Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big , Show Boat , and Giant .-Early years:Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan,...

     - Dinner at Eight
    Dinner at Eight (play)
    Dinner at Eight is a play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber.-1932 Original Production:Dinner at Eight opened October 22, 1932 at the Music Box Theatre. It closed after 232 performances in May 1933. The play was produced by Sam H. Harris, staged by George S. Kaufman; Assistant Director: Robert B...

  • Marcel Pagnol
    Marcel Pagnol
    Marcel Pagnol was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. In 1946, he became the first filmmaker elected to the Académie Française.-Biography:...

     - Fanny
    Fanny
    Fanny is a given name, and a pet form of Frances.Notable people bearing this name include:* Fanny , an alias of breakcore artist Fraser Runciman* Fanny Adams, a 19th-century murder victim* Fanny Ardant, a French actress...


Poetry

  • W. H. Auden
    W. H. Auden
    Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

     - The Orators
  • Cecil Day-Lewis
    Cecil Day-Lewis
    Cecil Day-Lewis CBE was an Irish poet and the Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake...

     - From Feathers To Iron
  • An "Objectivist
    Objectivist poets
    The Objectivist poets were a loose-knit group of second-generation Modernists who emerged in the 1930s. They were mainly American and were influenced by, amongst others, Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams...

    's" Anthology
  • Boris Pasternak
    Boris Pasternak
    Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...

     - The Second Birth

Non-fiction

  • Henri Bergson
    Henri Bergson
    Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...

     - Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion (The Two Sources of Morality and Religion)
  • Bernard DeVoto
    Bernard DeVoto
    Bernard Augustine DeVoto was an American historian and author who specialized in the history of the American West.- Life and work :He was born in Ogden, Utah...

     - Mark Twain's America
  • T. S. Eliot
    T. S. Eliot
    Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

     - Selected Essays, 1917-1932
    Selected Essays, 1917-1932
    Selected Essays, 1917-1932 is a collection of prose and literary criticism by T.S. Eliot. Eliot's work fundamentally changed literary thinking and Selected Essays provides both an overview and an in-depth examination of his theory...

    (1932)

Births

  • January 18 - Robert Anton Wilson
    Robert Anton Wilson
    Robert Anton Wilson , known to friends as "Bob", was an American author and polymath who became at various times a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic...

    , author (d. 2007)
  • February 7 - Gay Talese
    Gay Talese
    Gay Talese is an American author. He wrote for The New York Times in the early 1960s and helped to define literary journalism...

    , author
  • February 16 - Aharon Appelfeld
    Aharon Appelfeld
    -Biography:Appelfeld was born in the village of Zhadova near Czernowitz, Romania, now Ukraine. In 1941, when he was eight years old, the Romanian army invaded his hometown and his mother was murdered. Appelfeld was deported with his father to a concentration camp in Ukraine. He escaped and hid for...

    , novelist and poet
  • March 18 - John Updike
    John Updike
    John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....

    , novelist and poet (d. 2009)
  • March 31 - John Jakes
    John Jakes
    John William Jakes is an American writer, best known for American historical fiction.-Early life and education:...

    , novelist
  • May 7 - Jenny Joseph
    Jenny Joseph
    -Life and career:She was born in Birmingham, and with a scholarship, studied English literature at St Hilda's College, Oxford .Her poems were first published when she was at university in the early 1950s...

    , poet
  • June 5 - Christy Brown
    Christy Brown
    Christy Brown was an Irish author, painter and poet who had cerebral palsy. He is most famous for his autobiography My Left Foot, which was later made into an Academy Award-winning film of the same name....

    , My Left Foot author (d. 1981)
  • July 17 - Karla Kuskin
    Karla Kuskin
    Karla Kuskin was a prolific author, illustrator and reviewer of children's literature. Kuskin was known for her poetic, alliterative style.-Personal life and education:...

    , children's book author and illustrator (d. 2009)
  • August 16 - Christopher Okigbo
    Christopher Okigbo
    Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo was a Nigerian poet, who died fighting for the independence of Biafra. He is today widely acknowledged as the outstanding postcolonial English-language African poet and one of the major modernist writers of the twentieth century.-Early life:Okigbo was born on August...

    , Nigerian poet (d. 1967)
  • August 17 - V. S. Naipaul
    V. S. Naipaul
    Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC is a Nobel prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian-British writer who is known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism...

    , novelist
  • September 7 - Malcolm Bradbury
    Malcolm Bradbury
    Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was an English author and academic.-Life:Bradbury was the son of a railwayman. His family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with his brother and mother...

    , novelist (d. 2000)
  • October 27 - Sylvia Plath
    Sylvia Plath
    Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...

    , poet (d. 1963)
  • unknown date - Troy Kennedy Martin
    Troy Kennedy Martin
    Troy Kennedy Martin was a Scottish-born film and television screenwriter best known for creating the long running BBC TV police series Z-Cars, and for the award-winning 1985 anti-nuclear drama Edge of Darkness...

    , scriptwriter

Deaths

  • January 21 - Lytton Strachey
    Lytton Strachey
    Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit...

    , biographer
  • February 10 - Edgar Wallace
    Edgar Wallace
    Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was an English crime writer, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and playwright, who wrote 175 novels, 24 plays, and numerous articles in newspapers and journals....

    , crime writer
  • March 16 - Harold Monro
    Harold Monro
    Harold Edward Monro was a British poet, the proprietor of the Poetry Bookshop in London which helped many famous poets bring their work before the public....

    , poet
  • April 20 - Giuseppe Peano
    Giuseppe Peano
    Giuseppe Peano was an Italian mathematician, whose work was of philosophical value. The author of over 200 books and papers, he was a founder of mathematical logic and set theory, to which he contributed much notation. The standard axiomatization of the natural numbers is named the Peano axioms in...

    , philosopher
  • April 26 - Hart Crane
    Hart Crane
    -Career:Throughout the early 1920s, small but well-respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s lyrics, gaining him, among the avant-garde, a respect that White Buildings , his first volume, ratified and strengthened...

    , poet
  • May 22 - Augusta, Lady Gregory
    Augusta, Lady Gregory
    Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory , born Isabella Augusta Persse, was an Irish dramatist and folklorist. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of...

    , dramatist
  • June 17 - Sir John Quick
    John Quick (politician)
    Sir John Quick , Australian politician and author, was the federal Member of Parliament for Bendigo from 1901 to 1913 and a leading delegate to the constitutional conventions of the 1890s.-Early life:...

    , politician and author
  • July 6 - Kenneth Grahame
    Kenneth Grahame
    Kenneth Grahame was a Scottish writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows , one of the classics of children's literature. He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon; both books were later adapted into Disney films....

    , Wind in the Willows author
  • July 20 - René Bazin
    René Bazin
    René François Nicolas Marie Bazin was a French novelist.Born at Angers, he studied law in Paris, and on his return to Angers became Professor of Law in the Catholic university...

    , novelist
  • July 22 - J. Meade Falkner
    J. Meade Falkner
    John Meade Falkner was an English novelist and poet, best known for his 1898 novel, Moonfleet. An extremely successful businessman as well, he became chairman of the arms manufacturer Armstrong Whitworth during World War I.-Life and works:Falkner was born in Manningford Bruce, Wiltshire and spent...

    , Moonfleet author
  • November 23 - Henry S. Whitehead
    Henry S. Whitehead
    Rev. Henry St. Clair Whitehead was an American writer of horror fiction and fantasy.- Biography :Henry S. Whitehead was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey on March 5, 1882. He graduated from Harvard University in 1904. He led an active and worldly life, playing football at Harvard...

    , American author

Awards

  • James Tait Black Memorial Prize
    James Tait Black Memorial Prize
    Founded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are among the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English language and are Britain's oldest literary awards...

     for fiction: Helen de Guerry Simpson
    Helen de Guerry Simpson
    Helen de Guerry Simpson was an Australian novelist.-Life and career:Simpson was born in Sydney into a family that had been settled in New South Wales for over 100 years...

    , Boomerang
  • James Tait Black Memorial Prize
    James Tait Black Memorial Prize
    Founded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are among the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English language and are Britain's oldest literary awards...

     for biography: Stephen Gwynn, The Life of Mary Kingsley
    Mary Kingsley
    Mary Henrietta Kingsley was an English writer and explorer who greatly influenced European ideas about Africa and African people.-Early life:Kingsley was born in Islington, London on 13 October 1862...

  • Newbery Medal
    Newbery Medal
    The John Newbery Medal is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association . The award is given to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. The award has been given since 1922. ...

     for children's literature
    Children's literature
    Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...

    : Laura Adams Armer
    Laura Adams Armer
    Laura Adams Armer was an American artist and writer. In 1932, her novel Waterless Mountain won the Newbery Medal....

    , Waterless Mountain
    Waterless Mountain
    Waterless Mountain is a novel by Laura Adams Armer that was awarded the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1932.-Plot:...

  • Nobel Prize for literature: John Galsworthy
    John Galsworthy
    John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...

  • Pulitzer Prize for Drama
    Pulitzer Prize for Drama
    The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than the calendar year...

    : George S. Kaufman
    George S. Kaufman
    George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, notably for the Marx Brothers...

    , Morrie Ryskind
    Morrie Ryskind
    Morrie Ryskind was an American dramatist, lyricist and writer of theatrical productions and motion pictures, who became a conservative political activist later in life.-Biography:...

    , Ira Gershwin
    Ira Gershwin
    Ira Gershwin was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century....

    , Of Thee I Sing
  • Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
    Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
    The Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...

    : George Dillon
    George Dillon
    George Hill Dillon was an American editor and poet. He was born in Jacksonville, Florida but he spent his childhood in Kentucky and the Mid-West. He graduated from The University of Chicago in 1927 with a degree in English...

    : The Flowering Stone
  • Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Pearl S. Buck
    Pearl S. Buck
    Pearl Sydenstricker Buck also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu , was an American writer who spent most of her time until 1934 in China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the U.S. in 1931 and 1932, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932...

    : The Good Earth
    The Good Earth
    The Good Earth is a novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1932. The best selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932, it was an influential factor in Buck winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938...

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